September 2008 Archives

This is a great example of why organizations, in this case the largest university in British Columbia, Canada, need to be ready to use the new media to get their messages out quickly and effectively when things go wrong.

On Wednesday, January 30th, 2008, the University of British Columbia (UBC) Biological Sciences building was locked down by the on campus police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for "no apparent reason."

Reports indicated that the RCMP did not disclose a reason for the lock down other than because they had received a threat:

"Information is being withheld to protect the public," said RCMP Cst. Annie Linteau. She said releasing details about the threat - which was not a bomb threat "could jeopardize the investigation."

While the university had recently acquire a text messaging system, they decided not to use it because it had not been tested and only 40% of the student population had enrolled in the program.

Hello ... if you could reach 40% of your student body, wouldn't you see this as the ideal way to test your system in a real world situation.? Not UBC.

Officials in charge decided it was better to send university staff, in their little Gucchi shoes and tweeds, trip-trapping down the hallways, knocking on doors, advising students to not leave their classes until they were given a code word.

No use was made of public address systems, no use of SMS text messaging, no use of electronic message boards, just profs walking down the hallways.

Remember what happened in other recent serious university incidents? The perpetrators shot everyone they saw in the hallways!

It is a mistake to hold information back - I recommend that organizations tell people what is happening. And they need to do it quickly and effectively.

The next day, announcer Belle Puri from Canada's national radio network, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), "On the Coast" interviewed me to get my reaction to what had happened.

I explained that the stakeholders (students) were communicating effectively amongst one another and with family via mobile phone and the Internet. However, the voices of authority remained silent.

I emphasized that it is important for crisis communicators to explain what is happening and why people should listen to you. In other words, provide a method to your madness.

In the UBC case, there was no apparent reason given to students to stay in place.

Moreover, people need reassurance that everything is going to be okay; otherwise, lack of knowledge breeds rumour, fear, and panic. In crisis situations, stakeholders need to be informed as to what is going on--and fast.

A few days later, Wednesday, February 6th, the UBC Biological Sciences building was closed again, with classes canceled for the day. The Vancouver Sun reported that the police were unsure as to the nature of the threat(s).

Again, RCMP Cst. Linteau would not say how the second threat was received, but said it was "unspecified" in nature, meaning they would not name a time, location or method of doing harm. The RCMP simply stated that the threat had been which had made against UBC last Wednesday -- focusing on the bio-sciences building -- would be carried out today.

Once again the university did not use it's "test" text messaging system to communicate with their students.

From my observation of local and national media and from my perspective, the RCMP's communication style has become an issue.

Also, the credibility of the university was at risk because of "paralysis of analysis."

When things go wrong, organizations get one chance to get out first with their messages.

In the age of the Media 2.0, organizations need to use the new media quickly and effectively or they will be left at the starting blocks. Everyone else will be getting their messages out and you will be left out of the mix.

Photo on UBC Bioscience building by 604 Plonker. Creative Common License Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

For some time now I have held a belief that the new media, as demonstrated by the World Wide Web is a continuously morphing conversation that has more in common with ancient oral traditions of storytelling than it does with books and journals.

Rather than being permanent and immutable, the web allows people to pick their way through information, change it, respond to it and create communications with each other. Wikipedia is a perfect example of this shifting intercourse.

A recent study done by John Foley of the University of Missouri supports my theses as well.

Foley says the new media follows the same traditions that used to happen around the campfire and at the local tavern, where stories, news and songs were shared, never the same way twice. "The stories could bend and morph and adapt depending on who was there and what the mood of the audience was, " he says, "And people weren't just the receivers of information, it was participatory, they were co-creators."

Sound familiar?

The old media, particularly newspapers are limited by their greatest strength: permanence.

From the storyteller's perspective, when stories are written down, they die. The book must be a monologue that must be absorbed sequentially, word after word, sentence after sentence. Put that way it sounds like a ploddingly dull way to get information. No wonder the under-25 generation is not interested in the old media.

Kids who function with ease in the hyperlinked, multimedia world of the Internet, find books a tough and boring slog.

It also explains why schools are struggling to teach print-based curriculum while the entire structure of human knowledge is being rewritten at the speed of light outside the classroom.

"Oral tradition is a technology of communications just as the Internet is technology of communications," says Foley. Print is technology too, but oral traditions and the Internet have more in common with each other than either has with print.

Foley postulates that "text is not the most natural way for humans to communicate."

It's not likely that books will disappear but people will have to develop multiple literacies to function in the future.

The traditional media is not aware of the ease with which the new media users can operate in a sometimes baffling electronic environment where every piece of information chosen leads to more choices and the experience of navigating is different every time.

"The new media users are native to the technology," says Foley.

On-line publishing techniques are now being used to bridge this gap.

The Pathways Project (www.pathwaysproject.com) encourages analysis and creation of oral traditions in new media by exploiting the greatest strength shared by ancient and modern information technology: open source content creation and interactivity.

Pathways includes a morphing book in a instant state of revision by the readers-users.

This interactivity is the key to the success of the new media. With the old media, the only interactivity we can have is writing a letter to the editor and hoping he or she will publish the carefully edited version of it in the next few days.

With the new media there is instant response and dialogue.

Editors of newspapers are recognizing this. For example, many papers now have their reporter take along a video camera to an assignment.
They shoot a roughly assembled video load it up on the newspaper's website and then follow this up with a detailed story the next day.

This, too, is in the tradition of oral communications but uses the new media to accomplish it.

Photo:  Rob Lee. Creative Commons License Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

If there ever was any doubt about the power of the new media, this can be dispelled by looking at the way the McCain and Obama campaign committees are using the new media to get their messages across and to establish dialogue with voters.

Traditional media is easy to measure in terms of audience reach but not in terms on how it is affecting your intended audiences.

The new media provides instant feedback to the candidate.

Web sites provide raw numbers in terms of "hits" - how many times the site is being visited but also provides an opportunity for site visitors to comment on what he or she thinks about the campaign, to offer suggests for change, new ideas and responses to the position of the other candidate.

Both the Obama and McCain sites are using the most up-to-date and sophisticated technology.

Let's look at some things on Barrack Obama's site, www.barackobama.com. Obama himself does NOT write this blog. It does however work at being current and update with the latest stories and breaking events.

First off, his site has a date and time on it - this is critical. In a fast-moving political environment, you cannot be seen as being yesterday's news.

That will make you part of the "old" media - like today's newspaper that essentially is providing in-depth coverage of old news.


The blog makes use of current images of Barack and Joe Biden on the campaign trail. There are some excellent photos and videos of the two of them at events conducted the night before or earlier in the day.

Viewers get to see Joe Biden in action by clicking on a Flickr slideshow.  A simple click also takes you to links with Digg, Facebook, Newsvine, Stumble and del.icio.us

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give Obama's site an 8.5.

The McCain website is also written in the 3rd person but keeps visitor interest high between blog updates with dynamic new photos and videos.
They also refer you to You Tube for other perspectives on the election.

Viewer reminders are posed prominently advising visitors to check back frequently for updates.

When I checked on the Next Page box, I was invited to join Community McCain Space.

It is very user-friendly providing lots of possibility for visitor participation.  This gave me a choice of top RSS (Really Simple Syndication - a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works) on Iraq, health, the economy, and campaign spending.

www.johnmccain.com makes excellent use of the most current You Tube videos to slam Obama.

This is a good example of using the new media to make your opponent look bad without saying he or she is bad yourself, just let the audience be the judge of what others are saying.

I would also give the McCain web site an 8.5 rating.

State and local officials who want to be aware of effective ways to use the new media should become new media "junkies' over the next few months and take some lessons from the leaders of the pack.